


Did you ever wonder why there’s no guest WiFi on the Enterprise bridge?

by danhon



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Humor, Mundane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-18 07:00:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21271511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danhon/pseuds/danhon
Summary: Ten Forward probably has free WiFi, right? Like, 1701D-TEN-FORWARD-FREE-WIFI.Now, if there’s a free wifi network at Ten Forward, which makes sense, then it would make even less sense (and therefore potentially funnier) if there were a wifi network named 1701D-ENGINEERING-FREE-WIFI in... the Engineering section. It would be funny and make no sense because really what business do guests have down in the engine room needing wifi and secondly, this is a stupendously stupid security risk. It is the kind of risk that results in your enemies stealing your shield rotation frequency codes and being able to steal your ship...But what would be an even dumber place to have Wifi than Engineering? The bridge, of course! And then we can imagine: well, under what circumstances would Starfleet in its great and knowledgeable bureaucracy decide to disallow the deployment of free wifi on the bridge of its ships? What possible event could have happened?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Did you ever wonder why there’s no guest WiFi on the Enterprise bridge?

*Alien materializes on the bridge of the Enterprise, punching through shields. In theory, everyone should be surprised about this but this is not real and things happen that are driven by plot, so people are only mildly surprised that this happens. In any event, PICARD greets the alien thus:*

PICARD: Greetings. My name is Jean-Luc Picard and we come in peace from the United Federation of Planets. We are scientists, explorers and diploma-

*the alien taps at some sort of device it is carrying. It is inexplicably bipedal*

ALIEN: Do you have WiFi here?

*PICARD smiles*

PICARD: Yes! Yes we do have WiFi. The network is 1701D-BRIDGE-FREE-WIFI and

*the alien taps at their device*

ALIEN: Do I uh have to buy anything?

*in the background, TROI is tilting her head as if she can tell something out of the ordinary is going on*

PICARD: Oh no, the Federation is a post-scarcity society and we have technology called replicato-

ALIEN: OK what’s the password?

PICARD: Ah yes. The password is “infinite diversity in infinite combinations”

ALIEN: is that all one word, all lowercase?

PICARD: Yes! You must have had contact with other species in this sector to be familiar with standard communi-

LA FORGE: LA FORGE TO CAPTAIN PICARD! THE ENTERPRISE MAIN COMPUTER CORE HAS BEEN BREACHED AND WE’VE LOST ANTIMATTER CONTAINMENT! WE’RE EVACUATING ENGINEERING!

ALIEN: ...

*PICARD narrows his eyes at the alien, who sort of shrugs before dematerializing again*

*Three “star dates” later, in the main conference room, we join in the middle of a report Geordi’s giving* [Aside: do you think they name conference rooms in Star Trek?]

LA FORGE: ... we’ve successfully purged and restored the main computer by using a backup restored from the most recent comms buoy. I’ve recommended Starfleet immediately disable all guest WiFi on all Federation ship bridges pending a full security audit.

PICARD: Very well. Good work, Geordi. The lack of guest wifi on the bridge is certainly a minor inconvenience to our mission of peaceful exploration and cultural ties with alien culture, but the implications to ship security are... *beat* very much apparent to me after the events of the last few days.

chuckles around the conference room table apart from Geordi, who’s had to clean up this whole mess, fade out to credits*

... and that’s why some places aren’t allowed to have free guest WiFi.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a reworked version of a dumb Twitter thread at: 
> 
> https://twitter.com/hondanhon/status/1189602128890720256?s=21


End file.
